Prometheus 6   

Tuesday, May 20 12:01 AM EDT
Bush Proposes Universal Time Zone
By Brian Briggs

New York, NY - At the United Nations today President George W. Bush announced a proposal to unify all the world's time zones into a single Universal Time Zone (UTZ), formerly known as the Eastern Time Zone.

"It's unfair to the United States that other countries have the advantage of being in tomorrow while the US is stuck in today," said Bush. "If it's 9 PM in Washington D.C., it's already tomorrow in London or Paris. That patently unfair."

Bush continued, "Right now, Americans are losing jobs to other countries whose workforce can give overnight service during their normal daylight hours. We'll level the playing field and keep more jobs in the US with the UTZ."

… "Under the Bush UTZ plan, countries could either keep their current schedules and just adjust their clocks, or they could change their whole society to match the new time. But Bush warned against the former option, "It would be very risky for countries to eat lunch at a different time than the US. You are either with us or against us on this."

Britain immediately supported the US plan. "If it means sleeping in broad daylight then we'll stick with our allies," said Tony Blair, "Of course there's never broad daylight in the UK, so it's not much of an issue."

… France, another opponent of the plan, claimed it is too Anglocentric, and should be based on French time. President Chirac did concede that "it wouldn't affect us too much because all our workers stop working at noon anyway."